The Zionism of Orde Wingate - A Complex Origin. Part I

 

by Aaron Eitan Meyer

1^st part of 2

While it may seem strange to suppose that the year 1936 was in any way beneficial to the Jewish people, considering the state of affairs in Nazi Germany, and the dawning of the Arab Revolt in the British Mandate of Palestine, that year did also bring with it the beginning of a relationship that continues to benefit the Jewish people to this day. It was the year when Orde Charles Wingate—Scottish eccentric, military genius, visionary and one of the most passionate Zionists of his day—was assigned to a British Army Intelligence post in the British Mandate of Palestine, a move that would eventually make Wingate a hero of the Yishuv. And yet, while his assistance to the Zionist cause is well-known and appreciated in Israel, the origins of his commitment to the Jewish State are by no means clear, even to his biographers. Critics are apt to dismiss his Zionism with off-handed references to his Old Testament-heavy Christian upbringing or his affinity for the underdog as 'the' reason, but his real motivations are far more complicated. This essay sketches out the complexities that brought about Wingate's Zionism, while attempting to refrain from the amateur psychoanalysis that plagues too many biographies of the man.

Before delving into the psyche of the man, it is worth mentioning the effect he continues to have in Israel. Traveling through Komemiyut in Jerusalem, at the intersection of Jabotinsky and David Marcus, one will see Kikar Orde (known also as Kikar Wingate). There are Wingate Streets in Be'er Sheva, Tel Aviv and Herzliya as well. In the Carmel Mountains, just south of Haifa, there is the Yemin Orde Wingate Youth Village, which serves hundreds of disadvantaged, at-risk and immigrant children from around the world. Israel's national sports and health education institute in Netanya is fittingly named Machon Wingate, the Wingate Institute.

One might be wondering why so much was named after this man. In his book on the history of the Israeli army, Ze'ev Schiff called Wingate "the single most important influence on the military thinking of the Haganah."[1] While a complete analysis of that influence would constitute an article of its own, Samuel M. Katz put it succinctly. "Wingate had a profound impact on the molding of Israeli military doctrine. Defense, when fighting a numerically superior enemy, meant offense, and offense meant fighting deep inside enemy territory where the opposition was most vulnerable."[2] To this day, that concept remains the core of Israeli military strategy. And with that admittedly abbreviated digest, the focus may turn to the man himself.

 

Wingate's Background Prior to 1936

Beginning with Christopher Sykes' authorized biography of Wingate,[3] entire chapters have been devoted to Wingate's life prior to his years in the Mandate and later distinguished service in restoring Haile Selassie to the throne of Ethiopia and Chindit operations in Burma. While that degree of detail is not possible here, a brief sketch is essential to framing the question of his eventual adherence to Zionism.

Orde Charles Wingate was born in Naini Tal, India, in 1903 to parents who were members of the Plymouth Brethren, a Puritan offshoot. He was raised to believe that an individual owed a duty to God, though he would never prove to be a religious man in any regular sense of the term. During his initial military service in the Sudan, the young Wingate wrote in his Letter-Journal to "Serve God not self."[4] Wingate's religious upbringing involved consistent study of the Old Testament. (Later, such study would amaze Jews in the Yishuv who were impressed by Wingate's encyclopedic geographical knowledge of Israel[5]). But during his formative schooling years, including his military schooling, he felt alienated from his family's religion. Indeed, as his lifelong friend Derek Tulloch pointed out, while Wingate was at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he was in the midst of a rebellion against the religion he'd been brought up in, and that turmoil led to his not presenting "a very likable front to his fellow cadets."[6]

After graduation from Woolwich as a member of the artillery corps, Wingate sought the advice of his 'Cousin Rex', Sir Reginald Wingate, Sirdar of the Sudan, regarding where he should get assigned. Unsurprisingly, he would find himself in the Sudan, where his native troops would bestow on him the title 'His Worship the Judge' in recognition of his erudition.[7] Perhaps of greatest importance for the purposes of this paper is the fact that prior to leaving for the Sudan, Wingate learned (and displayed a considerable aptitude for) Arabic, the ability that would eventually send him to the Mandate of Palestine, and his destiny.

During his stay in Britain after returning from the Sudan, Wingate met and fell in love with the brilliant, though considerably younger, Lorna Paterson, whom he would marry. No analysis of Wingate's life could hope to be adequate without mention of the woman in whom Wingate found his intellectual equal, sounding board, and wife. Lorna Wingate herself became as passionate a Zionist as her husband, continuing to advocate for the Jewish Agency even after his death.

Indeed, it was Lorna Wingate who, in response to the utter lack of command-level officers available to Israel in 1948, convinced Ben Dunkelmann, a Canadian Jew, to fight for Israel, castigating him by stating that "Were my husband alive, he would not take no for an answer. He would demand that you go to Palestine and volunteer your services!"[8]

Upon the completion of his service in the Sudan, and a fruitless quest for the lost oasis of Zerzura, then-Captain Wingate found himself without an expected appointment to Staff College, which was at the time practically the only means for advancement in the military. After confronting the Chief of the Imperial General Staff with his complaint (and a copy of a published report on his quest for Zerzura), Wingate found himself given a post as an Intelligence Officer in Haifa.

 

Wingate in the Mandate

In the fall of 1936, Wingate arrived in Haifa, an Intelligence Officer chosen for that role in large part due to his fluent Arabic.[9] Up to this point in his life, he'd had extremely limited contact with Jews, and virtually no knowledge of or affinity for Jewish issues. As he would later express it, "In 1938 in spite of my natural sympathy with the Arabs and my understanding of their position I became during my official studies convinced that the Imperial, Jewish, and Arab interests all lay in in [sic] one direction."[10]

Had Wingate's interest been so limited to utilizing the Yishuv as war loomed, the matter might be settled there. However, Wingate did not merely see the Jews as a resource to be used – however essential they may be as a tool of British policy. He became such a committed Zionist himself that it never failed to amaze the leaders of the Yishuv.

But what actually led to that conviction? It is not only his critics who point to his early Bible-intensive education as a primary source. Yigal Allon referred to Wingate's "extraordinary Zionist ardour inspired by the Bible…"[11] while Shabtai Teveth cited Haganah archives as describing Wingate as "an eccentric, a genius, a man more religious than rational, given to great pathos, a firm believer in the Bible, and fired with a sense of the special mission of the Jewish people."[12] While describing Wingate as having a genius for "grasping and using new mechanical techniques," Lowell Thomas did not argue against the conception that Wingate was also "a Scripture-reading crusader."[13]

However, the complexity that formed the foundation for Wingate's remarkable genius does not readily coincide with the notion that his Zionism was simply based upon the Bible. As Luigi Rossetto wrote, "Wingate had one quality which stands out above all others and that was his ability to examine the situation objectively and to draw on that part of his experience which applied while rejecting that which did not."[14]

Perhaps the most objective and complete assessment of Wingate at that time was made by Derek Tulloch, who broke down the oft-noted facets of Wingate's psyche as follows:

One side effect of Wingate's unhappy experience at Woolwich was to incline him to take sides, invariably, with the underdog. He never forgot the sensation of all men siding against him. . . . The discovery, however, of this quasi-biblical cause in his life, which opened before him just at a time when he was expecting a cause to appear – to justify his existence and fulfil his destiny – explains his decision to take up the challenge.[15]

Tulloch set forth three components that, in his opinion, led Wingate to embrace the Zionist cause. In addition to the "quasi-biblical" nature of the cause, Tulloch added Wingate's inclination to side with the weaker party, and Wingate's need at the time for a cause in which his destiny could be attained. While the Biblical aspect is intriguing on its own accord, the latter two components call for further examination.

Aaron Eitan Meyer
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

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The Zionism of Orde Wingate - A Complex Origin. Part II

 

by Aaron Eitan Meyer

2^nd part of 2

Wingate and the Underdog

From his early years, Wingate felt himself to be up against significant odds, and that this self-perception played a role in his world view is scarcely questionable. While serving in Ethiopia after being banished from the Mandate, he exhorted that "The right of the individual to liberty of conscience, the right of the small nation to a just decision at the tribunal of nations, these are the causes for which we fight."[16]

However, it is by no means a simple matter to state that Wingate's affinity for the weaker side compelled him to the cause of the Yishuv, much less Zionism itself. Again, Tulloch provided the key element. "Had he found the Arabs were being oppressed and considered their cause to be just, he might well have directed his energies on their behalf."[17]

Far from Wingate's motivation being a case of perception feeding his underlying inclination for an underdog, it was through his intensive study of "the history of Palestine and the yishuv"[18] that he would emerge as a committed Zionist.

As Wingate wrote in a letter to Sir Reginald Wingate in early 1937:

We are in for a war sooner or later – no hope now of avoiding that after the Abyssinian fiasco – for pitys [sic] sake let us do something just and honourable before it comes. Let us redeem our promises to Jewry and shame the devil of Nazism, Fascism, and our own prejudices.[19]

The preceding is particularly illuminating for two reasons. First, in contrast to his official and semi-official communications, Wingate's letters to his cousin were not intended to be left for posterity. Second, and perhaps more importantly, is the global reach of the forces Wingate presented as arrayed against the Jews. The rising powers of Nazism and Fascism, coupled with his perception of British prejudice against the Jews represented considerable opponents indeed. Coupled with this was his deeply held conviction that Islam itself in fact cared "little for the Arabs of Palestine" and "would be prepared to accept a fait accompli."[20]

However one may wish to question the accuracy of Wingate's view on the matter, the fact is that his view of the Jews as not only the weaker party, but deserving of justice on their own merits, is clear. Indeed, he would later frame the issue by praying that, "God give it to us to slay the enemies of the Jews, for the enemies of the Jews are the enemies of all mankind."[21]

Wingate's identification of the Yishuv (and Jewry in general) as the weaker side was made on the basis of his direct observations and study of the situation, including widespread, and indeed institutionalized, British antipathy towards the Jews in the Mandate. When combined with the innate justice of the Zionist Dream, it may be said that the Jews became in a sense the underdog incarnate for Wingate.

And yet the matter cannot rest there. Though Wingate would find himself drawn to another powerless individual in Haile Selassie, when he later found fame and glory in Burma there is no evidence of a similar attachment to the downtrodden Burmese. And so we must turn to the third part of Tulloch's analysis, Wingate's need for a destiny.

 

Wingate and the Need to Find His Destiny

As previously stated, Derek Tulloch identified the components that comprised Wingate's need for destiny, a driving need to justify his existence and a means to fulfill the destiny demanded by that justification. As Sykes put it, "He was convinced he was a dedicated being, though dedicated to what he did not know, and he lived in continual fear that he never would know."[22]

Rex King-Clark, who served under Wingate in the Special Night Squads, was of the belief that, "it seems to me that his destiny, in truth, was to burn himself out for a cause – even, with Scottish perverseness, for a lost cause."[23]

In combining the need to attain one's destiny with the will to act on it, Wingate may firmly be linked to Theodore Herzl's immortal declaration that "if you will it, it is no dream." As Wingate put it to a prominent Jew, "I count it as my privilege to help you fight your battle. To that purpose I want to devote my life."[24]

Nor was Wingate's pondering a shallow or single-track thing. Colonel Philip Cochrane, co-leader of the First Air Commando, who supplied Wingate's Chindits with transportation and supplies during the second Chindit expedition, explained that, "He made you feel that here was a man who could look into the future and tell what was going to happen tomorrow."[25]

In short, Wingate found his destiny in Zionism at just the time he needed it most, and based on many of the same factual reasons that he was able to see the Jews as worthy underdogs. It is no secret that to the end of his days, he firmly believed that his destiny was to see a Jewish state arise, and that he would lead it in its battle for existence. Even though he died in a plane crash in Burma on a clear night in March of 1944, it can easily be argued that his destiny continued to be attained when the Haganah utilized his military doctrines in 1948.

 

Conclusion

The sub-heading for this section is somewhat misleading. Indeed, if this paper has demonstrated anything, it is that the complexity of Wingate's psyche makes it utterly impossible to state a conclusion with certainty as to why he truly became a Zionist. His mother-in-law, Alice Ivy Hay, was convinced that his only reason was that he believed it right for the Jews to have a homeland, and that that would bring about the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.[26] Rex King-Clark highlighted Wingate's need to find destiny in a cause. Still others have stressed his affinity for the weak and the powerless.

In the end, one must turn once more to the observation of Derek Tulloch. After appreciating the complexity of a man such as Wingate, the combination of various facets of his mind must be found to have led to his passionate Zionism. Wingate identified the Jews as the underdog, was convinced of the essential rightness of the Zionist cause, found it supported by the Bible, and foresaw his own destiny intermingled with the Jewish State. One cannot eliminate any link in that chain and still hope to even begin to comprehend why Wingate embraced Zionism. And yet, by attempting to encompass the totality of Wingate's Zionism one may indeed begin to understand the multifaceted and deep conviction that Wingate felt, despite the knowledge that a precise and limited answer isn't possible.

 

Aaron Eitan Meyer recently received his Juris Doctor degree from Touro Law Center, and is currently assistant director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, legal correspondent to the Terror Finance Blog, and a member of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa. His interest in Wingate began while he was an undergraduate studying Middle East Politics and History, and has led to over six years of research on Wingate's life and work. He maintains Orde Wingate Remembrance Society groups on popular networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Notes

[1] Ze'ev Schiff, A History of Israel's Army (New York: MacMillan, 1985), p. 13.
[2] Samuel M. Katz, The Elite (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), p. 12.
[3] Christopher Sykes, Orde Wingate (Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1959).
[4] Orde Charles Wingate, Letter-Journal entry dated April 12, 1931. This and other unpublished papers cited herein are part of the Wingate Archive of the Steve Forbes Churchill Collection (WA), which were generously made available to the author.
[5] Even Teddy Kollek, who had limited direct experience with Wingate, recalled Wingate's intimate knowledge of the land. Teddy Kollek, For Jerusalem (New York: Random House, 1978), p. 35.
[6] Major-General Derek Tulloch, Wingate in Peace and War (London: Futura Publications Limited, 1972), p. 20.
[7] W. G. Burchett, Wingate Adventure (Melbourne: F.W. Cheshire.Pty. Ltd., 1944), p. 49. For an excellent article on Wingate's Sudanese service, see Simon Anglim, "Orde Wingate in the Sudan – Formative Experiences of the Chindit Commander," RUSI Journal, Vol. 148, No. 3 (June 2003), p. 96.
[8] Ben Dunkelmann, Dual Allegiance (New York: Crown Publishers, 1976), p. 153.
[9] Even Wing-Commander Ritchie, who filed a Report calling for Wingate's banishment from the region, noted that "He is an exceptional linguist." Both the Report and Ritchie's typewritten notes on file, WA.
[10] Letter, Orde Charles Wingate to Wing-Commander Ritchie dated June 27, 1939, p. 12. WA.
[11] Yigal Allon, The Making of Israel's Army (New York: Universe Books, 1970), p. 9.
[12] Shabtai Teveth, Moshe Dayan: The Soldier, the Man, the Legend (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), p. 100.
[13] Lowell Thomas, Back to Mandalay (New York: Greystone Press, 1951), p. 71.
[14] Luigi Rossetto, Major-General Orde Charles Wingate and the Development of Long-Range Penetration (Kansas: Sunflower Press, 1982), p. xvi.
[15] Tulloch, Wingate in Peace and War, pp. 45-46.
[16] David Shirreff, Barefoot and Bandoliers: Wingate, Sanford, the Patriots and the Part They Played in the Liberation of Ethiopia (New York: Radcliffe Press, 1995), p. 181.
[17] Tulloch, Wingate in Peace and War, pp. 45-46.
[18] Michael B. Oren, "Orde Wingate: Friend Under Fire," Azure, No. 10 (Winter 5761/2001), p. 38.
[19] WA. Dated January 12, 1937, the letter was written well before Wingate became intimate with the leadership of the Yishuv.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Sykes, Orde Wingate, p. 167.
[22] Ibid, p. 86.
[23] Rex King-Clark, Free for a Blast (London: Grenville Publishing Co. Ltd., 1988), p. 204.
[24] Tulloch, Wingate in Peace and War, p. 46.
[25] Thomas, Back to Mandalay, pp. 79-80.
[26] Alice Ivy Hay, There Was a Man of Genius (London: Neville Spearman Ltd., 1963), p. 64.

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Civil Fights: Don't make me laugh.

 

by Evelyn Gordon

 

There must have been something in the air last month: Two prominent Israeli leftists publicly acknowledged fundamental problems in the "peace process" that will make a deal unachievable if not resolved.

 

Aluf Benn, Haaretz's diplomatic correspondent, articulated one problem in an August 7 column describing a conversation with a "senior European diplomat." Benn posed one simple question: How would a deal benefit ordinary Israelis? The diplomat was stunned. Wasn't it obvious? It would create a Palestinian state! After Benn pointed out that most Israelis care very little about the Palestinians; they want to know how peace would benefit them, the diplomat tried again: "There would be an end to terror." "Don't make me laugh," Benn replied.

 

When the IDF withdrew from parts of the West Bank and Gaza under the Oslo Accords, Israelis got suicide bombings in their cities. When it quit Gaza entirely, they got rockets on the Negev. But the bombings stopped after the IDF reoccupied the West Bank, and the rockets stopped after January's Gaza operation. In short, the IDF has done a far better job of securing "peace" as Israelis understand it - i.e., not being killed - than the "peace process" ever has.

 

NORMALIZATION WITH the Arab world is also scant attraction, Benn noted; most Israelis "have no inherent desire to fly El Al through Saudi Arabian airspace or visit Morocco's 'interests section.'" And the downsides of a deal - financing the evacuation of tens of thousands of settlers and "the frightening prospect of violent internal schisms" - are substantial.

 

Benn's conclusion from the conversation was shocking: Thus far, the international community has never thought about how a deal might benefit Israelis; that was considered unimportant.

 

But to persuade Israelis to back an agreement, he noted, the world is going to have to start thinking. For Israelis already have what they want most, "peace and quiet," and they will not willingly risk it for "another diplomatic adventure whose prospects are slim and whose dangers are formidable."

 

A week later, Prof. Carlo Strenger - a veteran leftist who, as he wrote, thinks "the occupation must end as quickly as possible" - addressed a second problem in his semi-regular Haaretz column. Seeking to explain why Israel's Left has virtually disappeared, he concluded that this happened because leftists "failed to provide a realistic picture of the conflict with the Palestinians."

 

For years, he noted, leftists claimed a deal with the Palestinians would produce "peace now." Instead, the Palestinian Authority "educated its children with violently anti-Israel and often straightforwardly anti-Semitic textbooks," failed to prevent (or perhaps even abetted) repeated suicide bombings in 1996, torpedoed the final-status negotiations of 2000-2001 and finally produced the second intifada.

 

But instead of admitting it had erred in expecting territorial withdrawals to bring peace, Strenger wrote, the Left blamed Israel: The 1996 bombings happened "because the Oslo process was too slow"; the talks failed because Israel's offers were insufficient; the second intifada began because Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount.

 

In short, the Left adopted two faulty premises: First, "anything aggressive or destructive a non-Western group says or does must be explained by Western dominance or oppression," hence "they are not responsible for their deeds." Second, "if you are nice to people, all conflicts will disappear"; other basic human motivations, like the desire for "dominance, power and... self-respect," are irrelevant.

 

Strenger concluded that if the Left "wants to regain some credibility and convince voters that it has a role to play, it needs to give the public a reasonable picture of reality."

But the same could be said of the international community, which has also blamed every failure of the peace process on Israeli actions: settlement construction, "excessive force" against Palestinian terror, insufficient concessions, etc.

 

THOUGH BENN and Strenger were ostensibly addressing different issues, they are closely related. Leftists reinforced the West's habit of blaming Israel for every failure, because they are the only Israelis that Western politicians and journalists take seriously. And this habit contributed greatly to mainstream Israelis' view of the peace process as all pain, no gain.

 

First, because the world placed the onus on Israel, Palestinians never felt any pressure to amend their behavior, whether by stopping terror or by making concessions on final-status issues vital to Israelis. Israel has repeatedly upped its offers over the past 16 years, but the Palestinians have yet to budge an inch: Not only will they not concede the right of return, they refuse to even acknowledge the Jews' historic connection to this land.

Second, while Israelis care very little about relations with the Arab world, they care greatly about relations with the West. Thus a major attraction of the peace process was the prospect of enhancing this relationship.

 

Instead, Israel's standing, especially in Europe, has plummeted since 1993. Europeans now deem Israel the greatest threat to world peace. Anti-Semitic violence in Europe has surged. European and American leftists routinely deny Israel's very right to exist, and calls for sanctions and divestment are gaining momentum. All this would have been unthinkable 16 years ago.

 

And this nosedive in status is directly connected to the fact that every time something goes wrong with the peace process, most of the West blames Israel. Indeed, the fact that Washington (pre-Barack Obama) was the one exception to this rule goes far toward explaining why Israel's standing remains strong in America.

 

Because this knee-jerk response has remained unchanged for 16 years, Israelis are now convinced it will continue even after a final-status agreement is signed: The moment Palestinians voice a new demand post-agreement or engage in anti-Israel terror, the West will insist that Israel accede to the demand or refrain from responding to the terror, and vituperate it for not doing so. In short, Israel is liable to make all the concessions entailed by an agreement and still see its relationship with the West deteriorate.

 

The bottom line that emerges from both Benn and Strenger is that no peace deal is likely unless both the West and Israel's Left radically alter their behavior. The million-dollar question is whether anyone in either camp is listening.

 

Evelyn Gordon

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Neutrality on Iraq-Syria: Obama Administration Betrays Ally and Doesn't Even Defend Its Own Soldiers.

by Barry Rubin

(So much of what is heard from the remnants of Israel's Left, as well as Kadima, is based on their fear concerning a breakdown in the strategic relationship with the U.S. Past experience, i.e. Straits of Tiran, as well as this article would suggest they place their hopes for salvation elsewhere.)

 

On August 26, State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, was asked what the United States thought about the Iraq-Syria dispute. His answer shockingly recalls the last time a U.S. government made the mistake of being neutral between an enemy radical dictatorship and a friendly moderate government.

First, some background. Iraqi leader Nuri al-Maliki visited Syria on August 18 to discuss the two countries' relationship. He offered Syrian dictator-President Bashar al-Assad a lot of economic goodies in exchange for expelling 271 Iraqi exiles involved in organizing terrorism against their country. Assad refused. Maliki left.

The next day, huge bombings struck Baghdad, directly targeting the government’s foreign and finance ministries. More than 100 Iraqis were killed and over 600 were wounded. The Iraqi government blamed the very same exiles living in Syria who Maliki was trying to get kicked out and implicated the Syrian government directly in the attacks. The two countries recalled their ambassadors; the Iraqis are calling for an international tribunal to investigate.

Enter the United States. Since the Iraqi government was created by elections made possible by the U.S. invasion, since the same terrorists murdering Iraqis have killed American soldiers, and since Iraq is a U.S. ally while Syria is a terrorist sponsor allied with Iran, what U.S. reaction would you expect?

Why, support for Iraq, of course. For decades under several U.S. presidents, Syria has been unsuccessfully pressed to kick out terrorists targeting Israel, and later Lebanon. This is an old issue and a very clear one for about a half-dozen reasons.

And what did the Obama administration do instead? Declare its neutrality!

Here’s what Kelly said, reading from his State Department instructions:

“We understand that there has been sort of mutual recall of the ambassadors. We consider that an internal matter. We believe that, as a general principle, that diplomatic dialogue is the best means to address the concerns of both parties. We are working with the Iraqis to determine who perpetrated these horrible acts of violence.…We hope this doesn’t hinder dialogue between the two countries.”

Before analyzing this response, let me tell you of what it reminds me. Back in 1990, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was threatening Kuwait, demanding that the weaker neighbor surrender to an ultimatum. Iraq was no friend of America; Kuwait, though not an ally, was a state that had good relations with the United States. A decade earlier, America had gone to the verge of war with Iran to protect Kuwait.

What did the U.S. government say? This was a matter between Iraq and Kuwait in which the United States wouldn’t take sides.

A few days later, Saddam invaded and annexed Kuwait. At the time and afterward, everyone said: What a terrible mistake! The announcement of neutrality, the refusal to support a small threatened country against a bullying neighbor ruled by a blood dictatorship, gave a green light to Saddam and set off a war.

And now the Obama administration has done precisely the same thing. Of course, Syria won’t invade Iraq, it will just keep welcoming, training, arming, financing, transporting, and helping the terrorists who do so.

The Obama administration has declared the war on terrorism to be over. But it also said that the United States viewed as an enemy al-Qaida and those working with it. The Syria-based Iraqi terrorists fall into that category. America sacrificed hundreds of lives for Iraq’s stability. Most of those soldiers and civilian contractors were murdered by the very terrorists harbored by Syria.

How can the administration distance itself from this conflict instead of supporting its ally and trying to act against the very terrorists who have murdered Americans?

Nominally, of course, the cheap way out was to say: We don’t know who did these particular bombings. Well, who do you think did it, men from Mars? Even this is not relevant since the Iraqi demand for the expulsion of the terrorists—who have committed hundreds of other acts—came before the latest attack even happened.

Moreover, the administration not only invoked its obsession with dialogue at any price but did so in an incorrect and dangerous manner. The Iraqi government had sought dialogue, had used diplomatic means, and was turned down flat. To make your main point is that diplomatic dialogue should continue is to side with Syria against Iraq. The message is: don't take any sanctions against Syria, keep talking, and if the Syrians do nothing and continue sending terrorists across the border, well, you can...keep on talking forever.

So is this administration incapable of criticizing Syria? Even if it wants to engage in talks with Syria it doesn’t understand that diplomacy is not inconsistent with pressure and criticism, tools to push the other side into concessions or compromises.

Looking at this latest development, how can any ally have confidence that the U.S. government will support it if menaced by terrorism or aggression? It can’t. The problem with treating enemies better than friends is that the friends start wondering whether their interests are better served by appeasing mutual enemies and by reducing cooperaiton with an unfaithful ally which ignores their needs.

 

 

Barry Rubin
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

If Everyone Else was Jumping off a Cliff, Would You do it? Middle East Answer: Yes, if Israel Didn't Like It.

by Barry Rubin

 

Who won that Lebanese election again?

True, Hizballah doesn’t control the majority, but with a president who is pretty submissive to Syria and Hizballah having a veto, the next government of Lebanon won’t be too independent-minded. Forget about condemning Syria for its involvement in past (and future?) terror attacks against Lebanese leaders, journalists, and judges. Forget about stopping massive arms’ smuggling to Hizballah or keeping Hizballah from treating the south of the country as its own private estate.

Saad Hariri, who will probably be the next prime minister and whose father was assassinated by Syria says:

"The national unity government will include the [Hariri’s] March 14 alliance, and I also want to assure the Israeli enemy that Hizballah will be in this government whether it likes it or not because Lebanon's interests require all parties be involved in this cabinet.”

Wow, sounds like a real tough guy. But the problem, as Hariri well knows, is not that Israel won’t like it but also that he and most Lebanese won’t like it. If Hizballah again provokes Israel into a war, as happened in 2006, Lebanon’s interests will be once again smashed because of the interests of Iran, Syria, and Hizballah, using Lebanon as a battlefield to achieve regional hegemony and spread Islamism.

And this also points the way to a deeper problem: the Israel excuse can be used to justify and maintain everything preventing progress, democracy, human rights, higher living standards, freedom, and just about every other positive development in the Arabic-speaking world.

If Israel doesn’t like it, well then it must be good. Iraq invades Kuwait? Hizballah drags Lebanon into war? Hamas seizes the Gaza Strip? The Palestinian Authority doesn’t make peace?

Whatever it is: “Israel doesn’t like it” is the justification for every failed policy, action leading to stagnation, and stampede to disaster that happens in Arabic-speaking countries.

It’s like your mother used to tell you when you justified doing something on the basis that everyone else was doing it.

“If everyone else was jumping off a cliff would you do that?”

Answer in the Middle East: Yes!

By the way, though, sometimes the situation becomes too intolerable for average people to accept. Here video of villagers in Merwakhin, Lebanon, chasing out a Hizballah force which had arrived to store weapons and rockets in their homes. They didn't want to become a military target.

Usually, of course, Lebanese (or Palestinian) citizens have no choice. Hizballah (or Hamas or Fatah) turns their homes into weapons' dumps, rocket-launching sites, or firing posts. If Israel fires back, they then run to the UN, human rights' groups, the media, and Western governments and yell about war crimes. It's a very good strategy if you have enough suckers or ideologically motivated people violating professional ethics to play along with it.

 

 

Barry Rubin

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

 

Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious.

by Spengler

"The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," declared United Sates President Barack Obama in his June 4 Cairo address. Really? Compared to what? Things are tough all over. The Palestinians are one of many groups displaced by the population exchanges that followed World War II, and the only ones whose great-grandchildren still have the legal status of refugees. Why are they still there? The simplest explanation is that they like it there, because they are much better off than people of similar capacities in other Arab countries.

The standard tables of gross domestic product (GDP) per capital show the West Bank and Gaza at US$1,700, just below Egypt's $1,900 and significantly below Syria's $2,250 and Jordan's $3,000. GDP does not include foreign aid, however, which adds roughly 30% to spendable funds in the Palestinian territories. Most important, the denominator of the GDP per capita equation - the number of people - is far lower than official data indicate. According to an authoritative study by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies [1], the West Bank and Gaza population in 2004 was only 2.5 million, rather than the 3.8 million claimed by foreign aid.

Adjusting for the Begin-Sadat Center population count and adding in foreign aid, GDP per capita in the West Bank and Gaza comes to $3,380, much higher than in Egypt and significantly higher than in Syria or Jordan. Why should any Palestinian refugee resettle in a neighboring Arab country?

GDP per capita, moreover, does not reflect the spending power of ordinary people. Forty-four percent of Egyptians, for example, live on less than $2 a day, the United Nations estimates. The enormous state bureaucracy eats up a huge portion of national income. New immigrants to Egypt who do not have access to government jobs are likely to live far more poorly than per capita GDP would suggest.

Other data confirm that Palestinians enjoy a higher living standard than their Arab neighbors. A fail-safe gauge is life expectancy. The West Bank and Gaza show better numbers than most of the Muslim world:

Life Expectancy by Country in Years
Oman	75.6
Bahrain	75.6
West Bank and Gaza	73.4
Saudi Arabia	72.8
Jordan	72.5
Algeria	72.3
Turkey	71.8
Egypt	71.3
Morocco	71.2
Iran	71.0
Pakistan	65.5
Yemen	62.7
Sudan	58.6
Somalia	48.2

Source: United Nations

Literacy in the Palestinian Authority domain is 92.4%, equal to that of Singapore. That is far better than the 71.4% in Egypt, or 80.8% in Syria.

Without disputing Obama's claim that life for the Palestinians is intolerable, it is fair to ask: where is life not intolerable in the Arab world? When the first UN Arab Development Report appeared in 2002, it elicited comments such as this one from the London Economist: "With barely an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can." Life sounds intolerable for the Arabs generally; their best poet, the Syrian "Adonis" - Ali Ahmad Said Asbar - calls them an "extinct people".

Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.

If the Palestinians ceased to be refugees, moreover, it is not clear how they would maintain their relatively advantaged position. They cannot return to farming; for all the tears about bulldozed olive groves, no one in the West Bank will ever make a living selling olive oil, except perhaps by selling "Holy Land" products to Christian tourists. Apart from tourism, the only non-subsidy source of income the Palestinians had was day labor in Israel, but security concerns close that off. Light manufacturing never will compete with Asia, and surely not during a prolonged period of global overcapacity.

An alternative is for the Palestinians to continue to live off subsidies. But why should they? Why should Western taxpayers subsidize an Arab in Ramallah, when Arabs in Egypt are needier? The answer is that they represent a security concern for Western countries, who believe that they are paying to limit violence. That only makes sense if the threat of violence remains present in the background and flares up frequently enough to be credible. One cannot simply stage-manage such things. A sociology of violence in which a significant proportion of the population remains armed.

To contain the potential violence of an armed population, donors to the Palestinian authority hire a very large proportion of young men as policemen or paramilitaries. According to a February 10, 2008, report by Steven Stotsky [2]:

Overhauling the Palestinian security forces will cost $4.2 to $7 billion over the next five years. What's more, the recent aid package agreed on in Paris committing to $7.4 billion for the Palestinians doesn't contain any provision for the security services.

The Reuters report follows a piece in the Jordan Times announcing plans to train a 50,000-person police force for the West Bank. This translates to one police officer for every 42-70 citizens (depending on which population figures for the West Bank are accepted), an unprecedented concentration of police presence. Currently, there are only 7,000 Palestinian police officers in the West Bank (Reuters, January13, 2008), so the new plan calls for a seven-fold increase. The planned expansion would result in a density of police at least three to four times that of major American cities that have to contend with much higher crime rates than the West Bank.

 

Add to this bloated police force the numerous other state security organizations as well as private militias, and it is clear that security is the biggest business in the Palestinian territories and the largest employer of young men. The number of armed Palestinian fighters is estimated at around 80,000 or more than six times the soldiers per capita in the United States. About one out of four Palestinian men between the ages of 20 and 40 makes a living carrying a gun.

That is, the economic structure of "pre-state" Palestine is heavily skewed towards the sort of institutionalized means of violence that is supposed to disappear once a state has been established. This is absurd, and creates a double disincentive for the Palestinians to maintain a low boil of violence. Just how this violence-centered society is supposed to make the transition to an ordinary civil society is an unanswerable question.

Once the problem is diagnosed with this kind of clarity, the solution becomes obvious:

  Cut Western support to the Palestinians with the aim of reducing living standards in the West Bank to those prevailing in Egypt, as an incentive for emigration.

  Demilitarize Palestinian society: offer a reward for turning in weapons, seize them when necessary, and give newly-unemployed gunmen employment weaving baskets at half pay.

Like many obvious solutions, this one never will be put into practice. The problem all along has been the wrong set of expectations. Once Palestinian Arabs adjust their expectations to correspond to levels of income, education and health prevailing in other Arab countries in the region, they can either form a state similar to other Arab states in the region, or simply emigrate to those states as individuals.

The Palestinians cannot form a normal state. They cannot emigrate to Arab countries without accepting a catastrophic decline in living standards, and very few can emigrate to Western countries. The optimal solution for the Palestinians is to demand a state and blackmail Western and Arab donors with the threat of violence, but never actually get one.

That is why the Palestinian issue is "hopeless, but not serious", in the words of my old mentor Norman A Bailey, a former national security official. As long as all concerned understand that the comedy is not supposed to have an ending, the Palestinians can persist quite tolerably in their "intolerable" predicament.

Notes
1. The Million Person Gap: The Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza, Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid and Michael L Wise, February 2006. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-ilan University, Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 65. Click here.
2. Plan for Palestinian Police Force Seven Times Larger than Current Force by Steven Stotsky, February 10, 2008.

 

Spengler is channeled by David P Goldman, associate editor of First Things.

Incitement to Murder.

by Yossi Klein Halevi

 

 

How Israel should fight the Swedish blood libel

 

JERUSALEM — Israelis are furious about an article printed in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet accusing the Israeli army of killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. The article linked accusations supposedly made by several Palestinians in the early 1990s with the arrest of a Brooklyn Jew several weeks ago on charges of illegal trafficking in organs.

Never mind that the author of the Aftonbladet article readily admits that he has no proof connecting the Brooklyn arrest with his charges — or that the Palestinians he quoted in his article have since denied making those accusations in the first place. In the current discourse in Europe on the Middle East conflict, the most outrageous lies about Israel become credible. No real proof is required to accuse the Jewish state of crimes that seem to be dredged from Europe’s oldest and darkest fantasies about the Jews. It is Israel’s responsibility to prove it is innocent.

The scandal would not have been possible without decades of one-sided reporting about the Middle East conflict, along with increasing demonization in recent years. When Israel is repeatedly cited in the Swedish media as the main obstacle to peace, when Swedish churches single out Israel as a target for boycott, the inevitable result is a resurrection of anti-Semitic motifs. In critiquing Israel, there are no longer standards or shame.

Aftonbladet’s editor, Jan Helin, wrote that he was not a Nazi or an anti-Semite. The first claim is no doubt true, the second debatable. Contrary to widespread assumptions among Europeans, one does not need to be a Nazi to be an anti-Semite. Contemporary European anti-Semitism has two spiritual roots: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The big lie of Zionism as Nazism and of the Jewish state as successor to Nazi Germany originated in Moscow, and became an essential part of Soviet ideology following the 1967 Six-Day War. Of the two versions of modern European anti-Semitism as they exist today, the far more pervasive — and dangerous — is the Soviet version. The rise of Western European anti-Zionism, then, is a posthumous victory for the Soviet Union.

Aftonbladet’s blood libel has offered Israel an opportunity to place the wider problem of anti-Zionism on the European agenda. And so the Israeli government was right in responding with outrage. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman compared the Swedish government’s refusal to condemn the article to its “position during World War II, when it also did not become involved,” while finance minister Yuval Steinitz declared relations between the two countries to be in “a crisis until the government of Sweden understands otherwise.” Previous opportunities to confront the thin line between European anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism — for example, cartoons in European newspapers equating the Palestinian situation with Jesus on the cross — were squandered. This time, the Israeli government seems genuinely determined to take the offensive.

The question, though, is how. So far, the government's response has been diffuse and at times counter-productive. Pressure on the Swedish government to condemn the article has not only failed but allowed the Swedes to turn the issue into a spurious dispute over freedom of the press. Prime Minister Netanyahu did note that, when Christians were offended by an Israeli television satire on Jesus, then-Prime Minister Olmert condemned the program without compromising freedom of the press. But Israel needs to more aggressively expose the Swedish argument as a sham — particularly in light of the country's far-reaching "hate speech" regulations, which have been used repeatedly in recent years to prosecute critics of Islam.

At the same time, the Aftonbladet needs to be challenged, in court if possible. Delaying issuing credentials to Aftonbladet reporters — as the Israeli government press office has done — is an emotionally satisfying but hardly adequate response.

Most of all, Israel needs to use this affair to challenge the general climate of Israeli demonization in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, and expose the conceptual links between classical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

As much as possible, this should be done in coordination with local Jewish communities. When Lena Posner, president of the Official council of Jewish Communities in Sweden, described Israel’s response to the Aftonbladet affair as disproportionate, and even appeared to defend the Swedish government’s silence, the Israeli effort was substantially undermined. Consulting with Diaspora leaders will not necessarily produce agreement, and there are times when Israeli and Diaspora interests will diverge. But at the very least, Diaspora leaders need to be consulted on Israeli decisions that directly affect their communities’ well-being, especially when those communities are small and vulnerable, like Swedish Jewry.

Accusations like the Swedish blood libel aren’t just a threat to Israel’s good name, but could become a physical threat to Jews everywhere. The Israeli “crimes” raised by Aftonbladet are precisely the kind of rationale used by terrorists to incite violence against Jews. In the current atmosphere, where the most inconceivable conspiracy theories involving Jews are readily believed by millions in the Muslim world, Aftonbladet’s recklessness is, potentially, an incitement to murder. The Israeli government should treat it as such.

 

 

Yossi Klein Halevi is a foreign correspondent for The New Republic, where this appears, and senior fellow of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.